"I thank you, Grainger. I thank you for your offer as well as for your efforts here to-night, and I will gladly accept the shelter of your roof for myself and young friends. Show us the way. Come, my children. Come, you also, Ishmael." "Thank you very much, ma'am; but, if I can't be of any more use here, I must go home. Aunt Hannah will be looking for me." And with a low bow the boy left the scene. CHAPTER XXVII. ISHMAEL'S FIRST STEP ON THE LADDER. There is a proud modesty in merit Averse to asking, and resolved to pay Ten times the gift it asks. --_Dryden_. Early the next morning the professor made his appearance at the Hill Hut. Ishmael and Hannah had eaten breakfast, and the boy was helping his aunt to put the warp in the loom for a new piece of cloth. "Morning, Miss Hannah; morning, young Ishmael! You are wanted, sir, up to the Hall this morning, and I am come to fetch you," said the professor, as he stood within the door, hat in hand. "Yes, I thought I would be; there must be no end of the rubbish to clear away, and the work to do up there now, and I knew you would be expecting me to help you, and so I meant to go up to your house just as soon as ever I had done helping aunt to put the warp in her loom," answered Ishmael simply. "Oh, you think you are wanted only to be set to work, do you? All right! But now as we are in a hurry, I'll just lend a hand to this little job, and help it on a bit." And with that the artist, who was as expert at one thing as at another, began to aid Hannah with such good will that the job was soon done. "And now, young Ishmael, get your hat and come along. We must be going." But now, Hannah, who had been far too much interested in her loom to stop to talk until its arrangements were complete, found time to ask: "What about that fire at Brudenell Hall?" "Didn't young Ishmael tell you, ma'am?" inquired the professor. "Very little! I was asleep when he came in last night, and this morning, when I saw that his clothes were all scorched, and his hair singed, and his hands and face red and blistered, and I asked him what in the world he had been doing to himself, he told me there had been a fire at the Hall; but that it was put out before any great damage had been done; nothing but that old wing, that they talked about pulling down, burnt, as if to save them the trouble," answered Hannah. "Well, ma'am, that was a cheerful way of putting it, certainly; and it was also a true one; there wasn't much damage done, as the wing that was burnt was doomed to be pulled down this very spring. But did young Ishmael tell you how he received his injuries?" "No; but I suppose of course he got them, boy-like, bobbing about among the firemen, where he had no business to be!"